She walks, she talks, she crawls on her belly like a reptile. She's almost human. It's.....THE OPTO-MOM!!!

Thursday, September 15, 2011

How Antibiotics Thwarted a Zombie Attack

The Appoccal- the Apockili- Oh, Screw It…The END is Near!

At least that's how I felt last week.

Miss Smarty Britches came in the other night complaining about her arm hurting. I asked to look at it, and was told NOT TO TOUCH IT, MOMMA!

Here is what her arm looked like:

Well, that's just...well...yeah.

That thing was so swollen and it hurt from her hand to her elbow.

It looked like there was a splinter or something in it, so I got the tweezers to try and get it out. As soon as I touched it, that sonofabitch popped open and all manner of gunk started oozing out.

Why can’t this crap happen in the morning so we can go to the doctor? But nooooo, she’s gotta wait until 9:00 p.m. to start the death squirt. Kids are so inconsiderate sometimes.

I finished draining the 4.5 gallons of pus and blood out of this volcano of flesh while my daughter was giving me the Stank Eye and no doubt, wishing a thousand deaths upon me.

Then she told me that her pinkie toe was hurting. Well, shit. Let me look at that too.

Hmmmm, nothing to see there, just a tiny scrape. I cleaned it, treated the arm and toe with peroxide, bandaged them both, and sent her to bed.

The next day, her arm looked like this:

Still giving me the Stank Eye the next day.

The toe was really getting swollen and painful, so I tried to get her a doctor’s appointment, but they couldn’t get her in that day. By bedtime, her toe was developing a black area on it.

The next morning, it looked like this:

Ummm, that's not good.

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

I kept her home from school and called the doctor and told them I HAD to bring her in today because I suspected a spider bite and her fracking toe looked like burnt hamburger meat. I guess I was convincing (or perhaps it was my insane mom voice shrieking about spiders and toe rot and elephantiasis and Tourette's Syndrome), because they gave us an appointment right away.

Even though it was her toe I was worried about, I thought I would show the doctor her arm, as well, since we were there and all. I took the bandage off, and this is what blasted my eyeballs.

Since they couldn’t find “turning into an apocalyptic zombie,” on the diagnosis list, the official diagnoses were an abscess on the arm and cellulitis in the pinkie toe. The pediatrician took a culture and gave my daughter some antibiotics and a topical ointment.

She didn’t give me shit, so I started myself on a vodka drip as soon as I got home.

After being on the antibiotics for a couple of days, the culture results came back as Staphylococcus aureus, but fortunately, not MRSA.

The arm still looked like zombies had been munching on it, but the attack zone was definitely getting smaller. And the toe? Well, it barely hurt and the swelling in her foot was gone. The toe itself was all bubbled up and resembled a Nerf football, but at least she could walk again.

Toe-lio? MC Hammer Toe? Toe-litis? Lep-toe-spirosis?

At our follow-up visit, the doctor opened the toe up with a needle and it started squirting brownish-red fluid everywhere. I won’t even post a picture of it afterward, because it’s worse than all of these other ones combined. I thought we had struck oil. Or maybe chocolate milk.

Y’all know how I like to find a silver lining in everything, right? Well, I’m using this opportunity as a weight loss program. Cleaning these wounds and changing the dressing 3 times a day has served as a definite appetite suppressant for me.

If it doesn’t go away soon, I’m gonna look like Kate Moss up in here. Calvin Klein, I’ll be waiting for your call.

This happened to my son when he was 17, although sans the toe. He complained about his elbow hurting for a couple of days, but there wasn't anything evident so I thought just growing pains or something equally as dismissive. On his birthday we had a trip to the zoo and he was miserable the whole day. Elbow was swollen and red and hot and angry. 'Yeah, maybe you should go to the doctor tomorrow morning', says mom-of-the-year. Next morning he got up after I left for work and the damn thing exploded. The doctor dx'd Staph, and proceeded to tell him some good horror stories about what could be/could have been. By the time I saw it that evening, it was the gaping crater of death and human eradication.

Now any mention of infections, zoos, or birthdays gets me the hey-mom-remember-when-I-had-staph-and-you-took-me-to-the-zoo spiel. (Because, of course, he doesn't realize how much I hated myself inside for not realizing something awful was happening inside him.)

In my defense, the boy is stoic as a tree. I suggested that in the future, when something that could zombify him and anyone in his vicinity is festering in his body, he might approach myself (and perhaps the authorities) with a little more umph and terror.

I had an old surgery scar decide to get all nasty like that. It hurt and swelled up and was horrible, so one evening I poked it with my finger...and almost puked. I have no idea what happened or what the hell got in their, but it sounds exactly like your daughters' exploding arm. Bwaaaaa!

Wow, scary AND gross! Poor kid. The man of the house kept complaining that his leg hurt him and when he finally went to have it checked out, it turned out that he had staph in his hip joint and it had eaten away at the ball joint. Now he has to have it removed.

By the way, thanks for the chocolate milk reference. I was going to drink one, but then I read that and...yeah. BLARGH!

omg, omg, omg. I can't believe you drained her arm without puking your guts out. I would have been pulling the crazed mom the day before, and threatening squirting the oozing crap into their eye. Yeah, don't piss me off. :)

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What you need to know about me

I am the proud mother of a 9-year-old daughter. I have been an optometrist for over 10 years, and love my job! I have been married to my husband for over 16 years. He works in the oilfield, and is also the lead guitarist for the rock band, SnakeBone...in his spare time!